Steam Controller “on track” to sell 1M units

The numbers may surprise the controller’s detractors, but the Steam Controller is on track to sell one million units by early next year.

Valve engineer Jeff Bellinghausen spoke at Seattle’s Steam Dev Days (via Gamasutra) and had this to say about the hardware’s sales: “We announced in June that we had sold 500,000 controllers, and we’re now on track to sell a million by early next year.” Indeed, the controller’s sales reached half a million in half a year, although it will be a while before the Xbox 360 controller isn’t the preferred PC controller.

Valve has been updating the controller consistently since release, and it seems this has been necessary: Reviews of the controller appreciate its mission to bring PC gaming to the living room, but find the hardware itself awkward and imprecise.

Despite this, the controller’s success has been undeniable. Steam has 125 million users, and the controller has 27,000 players daily, with an average playtime of an hour. “Now that there is a significant installed base of controller users,” Bellinghausen went on, “we are working on ways to promote games that they may be interested in. One of the more direct methods is to present customers with a ‘most popular with Steam Controller’ games list. … We will also continue to run focused sales that highlight hand-picked controller-friendly titles.” In other words: They are incentivizing devs to utilize their controller.

About The Author

Derek Dashiell is too proud of his Cleveland heritage and Kenyon College alma mater. He's affably pretentious, a combination which works better than you'd think but worse than you'd hope. He's been gaming since Pokemon Silver, he's analyzed Bloodborne from every angle, and Raz from Psychonauts is his favorite hero.